TV Review: ‘Arrow: Reversal’ (Season 6 Episode 4)

Alright, getting to it. To be honest, I am enjoying this season, this episode in particular, and that is even with the lead character taking a break from being a super-hero and letting the “side” characters be the focus of the series in the past few episodes. This is the first hour this year that I’m not going to complain about ridiculous decision-making (a rarity for ‘Arrow’), mainly because I feel they genuinely brought out a solid hour of storytelling that I was really intrigued by.

So this week brought back Black Siren, and we finally got to meet her boss, who I can’t believe I did not figure out was Cayden James, the super-hacker that HELIX convinced Felicity to help them break out of prison last season. The whole thing starts off with Siren killing seemingly-random people, who we eventually discover are all part of the security behind some massive complex that houses the foundations of “the internet” (I know, it sounds a bit preposterous, but… ah well). She is killing them and then stealing their fingerprints, and the Quiver Crew is homing in on the frequency of her sonic cry to track her down, all while Felicity is approached by her old friend Alena from HELIX, who tells her Cayden James went crazy while being held by ARGUS, and is now hatching a plan which has the potential to kill 4% of the world’s population (around 300,000 people I think Felicity estimated, though she and Curtis later surmise that could be a low-end estimate).

Alena and Felcity investigate on their own, with Felicity trying to cover up her mistakes from last season without involving the team, though Oliver knows what is going on and tries to protect Felicity, much to her chagrin as she is trying to protect him as well by keeping him away from the vigilante life while he is under investigation. Eventually, the two stories merge when Siren and James come after Alena, who is with Felicity, just as Team Arrow tracks down Black Siren, and though they manage to drive Cayden and his minions away, it is not without casualties.

In the crossfire, Alena is hit and taken to the hospital, and Felicity and Curtis manage to figure out that James plans to take down the internet itself, using the stolen fingerprints to get access to the facility mentioned before. So Felicity goes along with the team so she can do her anti-hack in person, and when the fighting begins, she has to strike out on her own to get to the control room to stop the internet sabotage before James’s plan comes to fruition. Luckily for her, Oliver is on the comms, acting as Overwatch-light, using her oh-so-conveniently automated computers back at HQ to guide Felicity through the facility, away from bad guys, and into the control room, and then giving her a pep talk (much like he did for Diggle last week) giving her the confidence to get the job done. And of course, while all this is going on Diggle and company are fighting Black Siren and Cayden James’s goons, but Siren and James both still manage to escape (because, you know, they’re the big bads for the season).

Throughout the episode, Oliver and Felicity were struggling to have their first real date back as a couple, which was amusingly interrupted every time by Felicity’s vigilante life, letting Oliver get a taste of what he had been doing to people for the previous 5 seasons. Of course, he is very understanding and tells her that he is proud of her every time it happens, and even tags along once or twice to help out. Eventually, after she saves the day, they do finally get their couple time, which seems to be getting pretty hot and heavy just as Oliver gets a phone call, interrupting them again. As for Black Siren and Cayden James, the episode ends with him presenting her with a device to block Team Arrow from tracking her Siren Call again, and she apologizes for the failed mission. He says the mission was never about taking down the internet, but rather about tricking Felicity into taking down the firewalls of that facility so Cayden could insert some code of his own, claiming he wanted Felicity to do it so his digital fingerprints were not there.

Oh, and the phone call Oliver received? It was from Slade Wilson, who apparently needs Oliver’s help. It’s time for the Deathstroke episodes!

BOW-STRING THEORIES:

Thea Counter – This will be Thea-less episode #3, only 6 more hours of beauty rest for Willa Holland

Huzzah! We finally know who Michael Emerson is playing this season! And the role of Cayden James seems like a good one for him, a calculating computer hacker, smarter even than Felicity, who clearly seems capable of giving Team Arrow a run for its money.

Could we be heading toward a situation where Felicity is outed as a vigilante and/or framed by Cayden James for whatever he is doing to the internet?

Is there any chance that Black Siren still has some good Laurel in her and will eventually turn on James? She is getting darker and darker as the season goes on.

While talking about Black Siren, she had a weird exchange with Diggle in the Green Arrow costume in this episode, did she really not realize that Oliver was not under the hood?

Does HELIX Dynamics mean anything in the DC Comics world? I tried looking it up but couldn’t find anything, I am just curious if the name of Felicity and Curtis’s new company has a hidden meaning.

Again, thoroughly enjoyed this episode, though I will admit I love Michael Emerson and was very excited to see him on the show. So now we’ve got a couple of exciting villains, characters moving forward in life and skills, and a very mature Oliver doing different things besides brooding and blaming himself, which is so refreshing on this show (though I am waiting for the Diggle on drugs hammer to fall). I cannot wait to see what the Deathstroke arc brings to the show and whether it means we will see Manu Bennet returning to Star City with Oliver afterward to face the new threat. See you back here next week!

Nicholas Graff

A Southern California native (which seems to be a rarity as everyone seems to migrate here from outside the state, and everyone else born here ends up leaving for less crowded spaces), but for Nick, he loves it here. Nick has been writing since he was a teenager, self-published his first book trilogy, 'The Legacy of the Roras' back in 2011, and in 2014 published the inaugural issue of his first comic book, 'The Shadow of Aquaterra.' While not working on my own projects, he is working as a technical film editor at a major television network in their digital media division and recently began writing news and recap articles for ScienceFiction.com, a position which he has found extremely rewarding.